| Author | Message | | sharkman | | Posted: Thu Jun 20, 2002 5:39 am Post subject: israeli treachery against usa and britian in lavon affai |
| The Lavon Affair
By David Hirst, Excerpts from his book: The Gun and the Olive Branch, 1977,
1984, Futura Publications
In July 1954 Egypt was plagued by a series of bomb outrages directed mainly
against American and British property in Cairo and Alexandria. It was
generally assumed that they were the work of the Moslem Brothers, then the
most dangerous challenge to the still uncertain authority of Colonel (later
President) Nasser and his twoyearold revolution. Nasser was negotiating
with Britain over the evacuation of its giant military bases in the Suez
Canal Zone, and, the Moslem Brothers, as zealous nationalists, were
vigorously opposed to any Egyptian compromises.
It therefore came as a shock to world, and particularly Jewish opinion,
when on 5 October the Egyptian Minister of the Interior, Zakaria Muhieddin,
announced the breakup of a thirteenman Israeli sabotage network. An
'antiSemitic' frameup was suspected.
Indignation increased when, on 11 December, the group was brought to trial.
In the Israeli parliament, Prime Minister Moshe Sharett denounced the
'wicked plot hatched in Alexandria ... the show trial which is being
organized there against a group of Jews who have fallen victims to false
accusations and from who mit seems attempts are being made to extract
confessions of imaginary crimes, by threats and torture . . .'49 The trade
union newspaper Davar observed that the Egyptian regime 'seems to take its
inspiration from the Nazis' and lamented the 'deterioration in the status
of Egyptian Jews in general'.50 For Haaretz the trial 'proved that the
Egyptian rulers do not hesitate to invent the most fantastic accusations if
it suits them'; it added that 'in the present state of affairs in Egypt the
junta certainly needs some diversions'.51 And the next day the .7erusalem
Post carried this headline: 'Egypt Show Trial Arouses Israel, Sharett Tells
House. Sees Inquisition Practices Revived.'
The trial established that the bombings had indeed been carried out by an
Israeli espionage and terrorist network. This was headed by Colonel
Avraharn Dar alias John Darling and a core of professionals who had set
themselves up in Egypt under various guises. They had recruited a number of
Egyptian Jews; one of them was a young woman, Marcelle Ninio, who worked in
the offices of a British company. Naturally, the eventual exposure of such
an organization was not going to improve the lot of the vast majority of
Egyptian Jews who wanted nothing to do with Zionism. There were still at
least 50,000 Jews in Egypt; there had been something over 60,000 in 1947,
more than half of whom were actually foreign nationals. During the first
ArabIsraeli war of 1948, the populace had some times vented its frustration
against them, and some were killed in mob violence or by terrorist bombs.
In spite of this, and of the revolutionary upheaval which followed four
years later, few Jewsincluding the foreign nationalsleft the country, and
fewer still went to Israel. A Jewish journalist insisted: 'We, Egyptian
Jews, feel secure in our homeland, Egypt.'52
The welfare of Oriental Jewry in their various homelands was, as we have
seen, Israel's last concern. And in July 1954 it had other worries. It was
feeling isolated and insecure. Its Western friendslet alone the rest of the
worldwere unhappy about its aggressive behaviour. The US Assistant
Secretary of State advised it to 'drop the attitude of the conqueror'.53
More alarming was the rapprochement under way between Egypt, on the one
hand, and the United States and Britain on the other. President Eisenhower
had urged Britain to give up her giant military base in the Suez Canal
Zone; Bengurion had failed to dissuade her. It was to sabotage this
rapprochement that the head of Israeli intelligence, Colonel Benyamin
Givli, ordered his Egyptian intelligence ring to strike.
Givli's boss, Defence Minister Pinhas Lavon, and the Prime Minister, Moshe
Sharett, knew nothing of the operation. For Givli was a member of a
powerful Defence Ministry clique which often acted independently, or in
outright defiance, of the cabinet. They were proteges of Bengurion and,
although 'The Old Man' had left the Premiership for Sde Boker, his Negev
desert retreat, a few months before, he was able, through them, to
perpetuate the hardline 'activist' policies in which he believed. On
Givli's instructions, the Egyptian network was to plant bombs in American
and British cultural centres, Britishowned cinemas and Egyptian public
buildings. The Western powers, it was hoped, would conclude that there was
fierce internal opposition to the rapprochement and that Nasser's young
r6gime,faced with this challenge, was not one in which they could place
much confidence.54 Mysterious violence might therefore persuade both London
and Washington that British troops should remain astride the Canal; the
world had not forgotten Black Saturday, 28 January 1951, in the last year
of King Farouk's reign, when mobs rampaged through downtown Cairo, setting
fire to foreignowned hotels and shops, in which scores of people, including
thirteen Britons, died.
The first bomb went off, on 2 July, in the Alexandria post office. On 11
July, the AngloEgyptian Suez negotiations, which had been blocked for nine
months, got under way again. The next day the Israeli embassy in London was
assured that, up on the British evacuation from Suez, stockpiled arms would
not be handed over to the Egyptians. But the Defence Ministry activists
were unconvinced. On 14 July their agents, in clandestine radio contact
with Tel Aviv, firebombed US Information Service libraries in Cairo and
Alexandria. That same day, a phosphorous bomb exploded prematurely in the
pocket of one Philip Natanson, nearly burning him alive, as he was about to
enter the Britishowned Rio cinema in Alexandria. His arrest and subsequent
confession led to the breakup of the whole ringbut not before the
completion of another cycle of clandestine action and diplomatic failure.
On 15 July President Eisenhower assured the Egyptians that 'simultaneously'
with the signing of a Suez agreement the United States would enter into
'firm commitments' for economic aid to strengthen their armed forces.55 On
23 July anniversary of the 1952 revolution the Israeli agents still at
large had a final fling; they started fires in two Cairo cinemas, in the
central post office and the railway station. On the same day, Britain
announced that the War Secretary, Antony Head, was going to Cairo. And on
27 July he and the Egyptians initiated the 'Heads of Agreement' on the
terms of Britain's evacuation.
The trial lasted from 11 December to 3 January. Not all the culprits were
there, because Colonel Dar and an Israeli colleague managed to escape, and
the third Israeli, Hungarianborn Max Bennett, committed suicide; but those
who were present all pleaded guilty. Most of them, including Marcelle
Ninio, were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. But Dr Musa Lieto
Marzuk, a Tunisianborn citizen of France who was a surgeon at the Jewish
Hospital in Cairo, and Samuel Azar, an engineering professor from
Alexandria, were condemned to death. In spite of representations from
France, Britain and the United States the two men were hanged. Politically,
it would have been very difficult for Nasser to spare them, for only seven
weeks before six Moslem Brothers had been executed for complicity in an
attempt on his life. Nevertheless Israel reacted with grief and anger. So
did some Western Jews. Marzuk and Azar 'died the death of martyrs', said
Sharett on the same day in the Knesset, whose members stood in silent
tribute. Israel went into official mourning the following day. Beersheba
and Ramat Gan named streets after the executed men. Israeli delegates to
the EgyptianIsraeli Mixed Armistice Commission refused to attend its
meeting, declaring that they would not sit down with representatives of the
Cairo junta. In New York there were bomb threats against the Egyptian
consulate and a sniper fired four shots into its fourthfloor window.56
This whole episode, which was to poison Israeli political life for a decade
and more, came to be known as the 'Lavon Affair', for it had been
established in the Cairo trial that Lavon, as Minister of Defence, had
approved the campaign of sabotage. At least so the available evidence made
it appear. But in Israel, Lavon had asked Moshe Sharett for a secret
inquiry into a matter about which the cabinet knew nothing. Benyamin Givli,
the intelligence chief, claimed that the socalled 'security operation' had
been authorized by Lavon himself. Two other Ben Gurion proteges, Moshe
Dayan and Shimon Peres, testified against Lavon. Lavon denounced Givli's
papers as forgeries and demanded the resignation of all three men. Instead,
Sharett ordered Lavon himself to resign and invited Ben Gurion to come out
of retirement and take over the Defence Ministry. It was a triumphant
comeback for the 'activist' philosophy whose excesses both Sharett and
Lavon had tried to modify. It was consummated, a week later, by an
unprovoked raid on Gaza, which left thirtynine Egyptians dead and led to
the Suez War Of 1956.57 When the truth about the Lavon Affair came to
light, six years after the event, it confirmed that there had been a
frameupnot, however, by the Egyptians, but by Ben Gurion and his young
proteges. Exposure was fortuitous. Giving evidence in a forgery trial in
September 1960, a witness divulged on passant that he had seen the faked
signature of Lavon on a document relating to a 1954 'security mishap'.58
Ben Gurion immediately announced that the threeyear statute of limitations
prohibited the opening of the case. But Lavon, now head of the powerful
Histradut Trade Union Federation, seized upon this opportunity to demand an
inquiry. Ben Gurion did everything in his power to stop it, but his cabinet
overruled him. The investigation revealed that the security operation' had
been planned behind Lavon's back. His signature had been forged, and the
bombing had actually begun long before his approval which he withheld had
been sought. He was a scapegoat pure and simple. On Christmas Day 1960,the
Israeli cabinet unanimously exonerated him of all guilt in the 'disastrous
security adventure in Egypt'; the Attorney General had, in the meantime,
found 'conclusive evidence of forgeries as well as false testimony in an
earlier inquiry'.59 Ben Gurion was enraged. He issued an ultimatum to the
ruling Labour party to remove Lavon, stormed out of a cabinet meeting and
resigned. In what one trade unionist described as 'an immoral and unjust
submission to dictatorship', his diehard supporters in the Histradut swung
the vote in favour i)f accepting Lavon's resignation. Lavon, however, won a
moral victory over the man who twice forced him from office. In the streets
of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, students demonstrated in his favour. They
carried placards reading: 'Ben Gurion Go to Sde Boker, Take Dayan and Peres
with You. We do Not Accept Leaders with Elastic Consciences.'60
The affair rocked the ruling establishment, split public opinion, forced
new elections and contributed largely to Bengurion's
eventual disappearance from public life. But Lavon was not the only real
victim. There were also those misguided Egyptian Jews who paid with their
lives or long terms of imprisonment. It is true that when, in 1968,
Marcelle Ninio and her colleagues were exchanged for Egyptian' prisoners in
Israel, they received a heroes' welcome. True, too, that when Miss Ninio
got married Prime Minister Golda Meir, Defence Minister Dayan and Chief of
Staff General Bar Lev all attended the wedding and Dayan told the bride
'the SixDay War was success enough that it led to your freedom'.61 However,
after spending fourteen years in an Egyptian prison, the former terrorists
did not share the leadership's enthusiasm. When Ninio and two of her
colleagues appeared on Israel television a few years later, they all
expressed the belief that the reason why they were not released earlier was
because Israel made little effort to get them out. 'Maybe they didn't want
us to come back,' said Robert Dassa. 'There was so much intrigue in Israel.
We were instruments in the hands of the Egyptians and of others ... and
what is more painful after all that we went through is that this continues
to be so.' In Ninio's opinion, 'the government didn't want to spoil its
relations with the United States and didn't want the embarrassment of
admitting it was behind our action'.62
But the real victims were the great mass of Egyptian Jewry. Episodes like
the Lavon Affair tended to identify them, in the mind of ordinary
Egyptians, with the Zionist movement. When, in 1956, Israeli invaded and
occupied Sinai, feeling ran high against them. The government, playing into
the Zionist hands, began ordering Jews to leave the country. Belatedly,
reluctantly, 21,000 left in the following year; more were expelled later,
and others, their livelihood gone, had nothing to stay for. But precious
few went to Israel.
NOTES
49. Jerusalem Post, 12 December 1954.
5O. 13 December 1954.
51. 13 December 1954.
52. Berger, op. cit., p. 14.
53. love, Kennett, Suez: The TwiceFought War, McGrawHill, New York, 1969,
P. 71.
54. Ibid., p . 73.
55. Ibid., p. 74.
56. Love, op. cit., P. 77.
57. See p. 198.
58. New York Times, 10 February 1961.
59. Ibid
60. Jewish Chronicle, London, 17 February 1971.
61. Ha'olam Hazeh, 1 December 1971
62. Associated Press, 16 March 1975.
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